The Shack has been ruffling some feathers in the culture, from what I can gather. Since I love nothing more than to ruffle some feathers, I picked it up today and read it over the last 2.5 hours. Is the book that gripping? No. Listen, when you go through higher education for about 10 years you more or less pick up some superhuman powers.

The first three chapters are best described as pedestrian. The writing is REALLY poor. There are some issues with long complicated sentences that are not needed, and cliches are rife. That being said, the book picks up (at least for me) once the trinity enters the picture. The story picks up, and the ideas pick up, but the writing itself remains subpar all the way through.

That isn’t to say that the book picking up is not without its problems. Problems such as representing God the father as a black woman, or the holy spirit as an Asian…which, admittedly aren’t really that much of a problem. There are stereotypes associated with each image chosen, but perhaps in the most intelligent decision made by the author, these stereotypes are not carried through. In fact, throughout the book, outside of the first shock, it doesn’t make any difference what the characters look like, as they become a sounding board for the author to wrestle with some theological concepts.

These concepts largely deal with evil in the world, which the author attributes to man’s drive for independence from God (completely ignoring the fact of demons from the Bible), and the complications that arise from the separation of God.

In order to do that, the author pret’ much leaves the bible in the dust. There are some stances taken throughout the book that are questionable from a Christian’s standpoint, especially when it comes to the lack of responsibility. I won’t ruin the book should you want to read it, but suffice to say it is more of a “I’m-okay-you’re-okay-God’s-okay” type of spirituality, focusing most on a conception of Jesus that conveniently ignores a great deal of what He said and what was written throughout the bible. It apparently is all about relationships.

To be completely honest, this book could have easily been about Buddha, and not to offend any muslims, but could have been about Mohammed…that’s how easily applicable the theology was, and how far it was removed from any biblical backing.

It was highly polemical when it came to power structures and heierarchys, claiming that they were a creation of independent and sinful men. I’ll let you read it to make your own stance, but while it did have SOME kernels of thoughts in there, it seemed to be too large a leap to come to these conclusions…especially as the majority of them were without biblical backing.

Let’s just say that it is an interesting read from a philosophical standpoint, but a read that should not affect your beliefs one way or t’other. The more I think of it, the more I agree with one reviewer on Amazon who said that it was a book perfect for people who wanted to recreate God in their own image.

Whether or not it reaches the level of subversion that another reviewer has claimed is another matter, one that I wouldn’t be so hasty to accuse this book of, due in most part to the fact that the writing is so subpar. Cliche is everywhere, the characters are two dimensional (no where near as complete as they are in the Bible) and it is because of that that I do not see this book as dangerous to thinking Christians.